Santorum has outclassed Gingrich. The former Pennsylvania Senator is famously undisciplined, but compared with Gingrich, he’s a robot. He can be prickly, but compared with Gingrich, he’s Little Miss Sunshine. He has won nine contests, more than four times as many as Gingrich has. Gingrich absurdly talks as if the competition to be the anti-Romney won’t be decided until Utah on June 26 or the third ballot of a contested convention. If he believes what he says about Romney’s weakness in the fall, he owes it to his party and his country to defer to Santorum now.

On Wednesday night, Gingrich told Illinois Republicans at a dinner that his opponents “can’t comprehend” his bold ideas and that the political system is “methodically and deliberately stupid.” What else could explain the fact that he’s not winning?